What is Truth?

Thoughts on the dangers of cultural relativism and its discontents

artist Eduardo Martinez

In the latter half of the 20th century, relativism emerged as the dominant doctrine in the West. Many books spanning various genres published throughout this period point out the rise of relativism in various ways, sometimes in passing or as a talking point.

In a 1989 interview with journalist Bill Moyers, F. Forrester Church, a longtime and well-known pastor of the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York, foresaw how relativism would dominate in a rapidly changing world.

Church said,

“People are frightened by the kaleidoscope of ideas, faith, and ideologies. When we hardly had any commerce with the tribe across the river and knew very little about them, we were secure in our own tribal gods and deities.

Now we are confronted with chaos. 

One way to respond to this fear is to retreat to firmer ground. It’s a retrograde response to go back and say, “This is the truth. We have lost it. We must return to it.” Another response is to look at all of it, throw up our hands, and become complete relativists.” 

Unfortunately, Western societies have selected Option B—we threw up our hands and became complete relativists.

Though Church said this in 1989, relativism was already long established as the doctrine of the time. Much of literature during this period makes note of this. While writing this post, I was revisiting Naomi Wolf’s 1990 book ‘The Beauty Myth,’ and found even Wolf mentions the rise of relativism in her critique of manufactured standards of beauty. Wolf writes,

In this century, most fields of thought have been transformed by the understanding that truths are relative and perceptions subjective.

This doctrine has since metastasized, growing uncontrollably in the West, and impacting all sectors of life.

But what exactly is relativism?

Relativism holds that things can only exist in relation to another thing. In relativist doctrine, there is no such thing as objective truth, no universalism, no absolutes.

History has seen some famous relativists, including Greek philosopher Protagoras, who is considered the Founder of Relativism.

Protagoras once said, ‘man is the measure of all things — of all things that are, and of things that they are not.’ This statement was interpreted by other philosophers to mean that there is no objective truth, and each person’s experience determines their own truth. Protagoras believed humans can only obtain partial knowledge based on their own experience. As such, ‘truth,’ according to Protagoras, is a matter of opinion. What is true to one person makes it true, what is true to another person makes it true for them as well, and so on.

Today we are seeing how small ‘t’ truth supersedes objective capital ‘T’ Truth, particularly where it concerns social issues.

In social justice ideology, relativism requires one to be inclusive and tolerant of other cultures, ideas, and traditions lest one risks being accused of bigotry or worse. To social justice ideologues, relativism is the more enlightened way of thinking. ‘My truth is the truth’, ‘My personal choice,’ ‘Live and let live,’ are just a few of the many oft-repeated mantras amongst social justice zealots who use the relativism argument to evade personal responsibility. As such, any morally ambiguous action can therefore be justified and is prohibited from being critiqued.

Even long-established fields of knowledge are being called into question. Math is a universal language; it is not experienced subjectively—it is an objective, quantifiable way of knowing. But even math is not immune from relativist zealots. In 2021, the Ontario government framed its math curriculum for high schoolers as a ‘subjective’ field, implying it can be repurposed and modified where needed. It only later removed such references when the story went viral. But how many other curricula is surreptitiously influenced by relativist thinking?

When the universal language of math is being questioned, what does this mean for other spheres of life? For science? For every day interactions? For social norms?

Harmful and depraved acts are being downplayed and twisted into simple ‘sexual preferences.’ Pedophiles refashion themselves as ‘minor attracted persons’; men are being granted access to women’s spaces under the guise of ‘inclusivity’; fat activists and doctors claim that obesity is in fact a healthy state of being. Healthy habits like staying active are being sold as ideological extremism, while harmful habits like consuming processed foods are framed as ‘self-care.’ Even biology is now viewed as a social construct.

Relativism justifies gluttony, hedonism, and slovenliness; it encourages complete disembodiment from the self.

Obesity is one of the most critical public health issues we face in our time, but it is being normalized and even celebrated. If we cared for objective truth, we wouldn’t celebrate preventative sickness, nor would we deny that processed sugar is poison. We might even admit that consuming genetically engineered animals is not only objectively unhealthy, but it is unethical, too. Animal agriculture is perhaps one of the most pervasive examples of relativism in practice. Critics often use the fallacy of tradition or culture (i.e., relativism) to justify the continued murder of billions of animals a year, but objectively, the practice is still morally inconsistent with the West’s stance on the treatment of animals (see: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows).

Even Peter Singer, the philosopher who helped launch the animal rights movement, recently promoted an article, ‘Zoophilia Is Morally Permissible,’ which seeks to dismantle the taboo of bestiality. Relativists can justify whatever act they please, even if it is morally inconsistent. If you’re a relativist, absolutely nothing is out of bounds, which means you must also accept more egregious actions like cannibalism, rape, and female genital mutilation.

If you see the world through a relativist lens, then it would be impossible to reach consensus on anything. We must either apply relativism to all spheres of life, which would completely dismantle society, or not apply it at all, and instead opt for a universalist approach. As we are seeing, we’re straying ever further from a universalist approach. And with advances in technology, the sharp turn towards relativism continues.

The merging of human and machine has ushered in the age of post-reality, in which the powers-that-be want nothing more than lower case ‘t’ truth to win for no other reason than to distort, distract, and divide.

If we are all living in different realities, then we will no longer find common ground. People who live by their own truth are able to weave new stories about themselves, their identities, and how they relate to the world continuously. Digitally, we can modify our faces, create new identities, and realities beyond the limitations of our human bodies, unlocking new insecurities and existential threats among men and women alike. This serves the establishment very well.

Relativism may seem inevitable, but it shouldn’t be.

Universal truths do exist. The laptop I am using to write this post will not suddenly morph into a book or a lamp. This is an indisputable truth.

And some values are shared across all cultures.

All cultures care for their young—though there are some traditions and policies that may harm youth—all cultures overwhelmingly still ensure their young’s survival, or else these groups would simply die out. It’s in the best interest of a group to care for its young from infancy to adulthood. Any culture that continues to exist necessarily requires them to care for its young in order to continue its progeny. This is another indisputable truth.

What if murder was widely permissible? What if we were free to kill without consequence? Even older tribes had established ideas of right and wrong and social norms used with which to guide them. All countries have some form of judicial system in place. While some function better than others, there are still systems in place that prohibit certain actions, and punish and/or rehabilitate the person who has violated the contract.

Could a society be able to exist without such systems? Of course not. A society without any kind of concept of right or wrong will collapse very quickly. So why can’t these concepts of right and wrong be applied universally?

What’s more, since relativists believe that truth is not absolute, they are actually expressing an absolute truth in doing so. If relativists believe we should all respect other cultures, then that in itself is a universalist position. The relativist’s objective belief is that truth is relative.

So what is the solution?

I don’t claim to have the blueprint, but I do think that finding moral common ground is critical in combatting relativism. It would also mean confronting our own long-standing hypocrisies and allowances for degeneracy. Ideally we would, ‘return to what we have lost,’ as Church says, but what this means in practice, however, is not clear to me.

That said, I think we can create something new out of a fractured, relativist, post-modern world, but we have to be willing to resist these trends and be unwavering in our commitment to objectivity.